An Englishman, his Sicilian wife and an Italian / English Dictionary

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I have a cunning plan.

While I was quaffing a rather nice glass of red wine at the local bar, I spotted a leaflet advertising an English Summer Camp, the experience of losing their kids for one week cost the parents the princely sum of €550.

Wine and chocolate food aids the brain cells

I will be honest, the summer camp leaflet and time table didn’t inspire me. As the smooth red wine stimulated my brain cells, I suddenly had a cunning plan.

Maybe I could run an English Summer Camp

Camping English Style

Obviously I can’t guarantee the traditional English weather.

I have an American friend who was an English teacher and more importantly she owns a vineyard, who better to team up with?

Over a cappuccino (I know it should have been a glass of wine) I told her about my cunning plan, I explained that I teach seven classes of kids ranging from six to eleven years of age. And if we talk to the parent we should have enough kids to fill the camp. I also mentioned the kids we could veto, for example the class clown in year 3 and little Marco who always has his finger buried up his nose to his first knuckle.

Marco the nose picker

My American friend disagreed, she said these are precisely the kids we should invite…

In the interest of research I sent a message to Linda Von Grady at Expat Eye on Germany to ask her opinion and she replied “Ha, why do you do these things to your self?”

My only excuse is the wine motivated me.

So in a little over three and a half months, twenty two Italian nose picking kids will descend on a vineyard for 6 days and 6 nights in a hope to improve their English and have a great and spiffing time.

And if we survive the encounter, another twenty two kids will arrive the following week.

Err..good luck, is all I can think of. It will be exhausting but hopefully rewarding. You’ll need plenty of wine at the end of it all and probably a holiday. 🙂 I’ve some experience in these things but I won’t share any of them with you right now…don’t want to put you off or give you nightmares. 🙂

Hmmm, I think maybe “English” camp is different than our camps in America. Will you teach the poor little buggers Oxfordian English or something useful? Koombiyah and Little Rabbit Foo Foo were the popular songs at my youth camp.

I have a sneaky feeling that the kids will look after you well, and you will become an award-winning nose-picker 🙂 I’d almost tempted to come along for the ride with Mrs Playmo, but we’ve got a Very Important Plan at the end of June so nose-picking in the vineyards will have to wait. Great project, well done!

Wow, that’s a pretty big group of kids! Good luck on your new endeavor! 🙂 Out of curiosity, where is this vineyard? I used to follow your blog quite a bit (before taking a hiatus from the blogging world), but I think I remember you were in Piemonte?